DOING RESEARCH IN VICTORIAN FICTION:

HISTORICAL, CRITICAL AND REFERENCE SOURCES

Sally Mitchell, Temple University

Note: This is a bibliography for a graduate course with a focus
on research (especially in contemporary periodicals) and on
women's fiction in the period from 1875-1900. The "Research
Tools" section should be broadly applicable, but the sources
listed in some other sections of the bibliography are more
narrowly limited to the aims of the specific course.

Research Tools

Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, ed. Walter Houghton,
5 vols, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966-90. Volumes 1-
4 present tables of contents from a number of major 19th century
British periodicals; the fifth volume is a cumulative author
index. The major accomplishment of the Wellesley Index has been
to identify authors for a great many anonymous/unsigned
contributions.

Poole's Index to Periodical Literature (1802-1881, with
supplements to 1906) and its Cumulated Author Index.

Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. Earliest volume is for
1890-1899; useful for finding author works and reviews in general
periodicals.

British Library. General Catalogue of Printed Books. For a
writer's complete works in volume form. Red volumes = books added
to British Library collection pre-1976. Tan volumes for post-
1976 (check for new editions and new secondary sources). See also
the listing of internet resources (next).

New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. Lists, with
dates, works by major and minor authors in literature and also in
other fields such as history, children's literature, philosophy,
science, etc.; provides brief list of secondary sources. Vol III
(1800-1900), 1969.

Early American Periodicals Index to 1850. On microcard. Lists
articles, fiction and poetry in American periodicals -- but
since transatlantic "borrowing" was common in the days before
international copyright, it can help turn up items by some of the
earlier writers, and it covers a period not included in
Poole's.

Propas, Sharon W. Victorian Studies: A Research Guide. New
York: Garland, 1992. Book by a librarian about guides, bibliogra^_
phies, lists of sources, and where to look for information on
many topics.

Victorian Studies annual bibliography--lists books, articles,
dissertations, etc. published during the previous year in
scholarly journals that treat any aspect of 19th century Britain.

MLA annual bibliography. 1981 - present is usually available
online or from CD-ROM in academic libraries. Most of the useful
pre-1981 sources will be picked up by the bibliographies of more
recent books.

Year's Work in English Studies (annual). Overview, by period,
of selection of books and journal articles, with brief
summary/evaluative comments. Use this to get a mental fix on the
nature and possible value of work done in the past few years.

Victorian Fiction, a Guide to Research, ed. Lionel Stevenson.
1964. Supplemented by Victorian Fiction: A Second Guide to
Research, ed. G.H. Ford, 1978. Evaluative surveys of research
and criticism of established novelists, with discussions of
primary bibliography (letters, papers, editions, etc.); now
outdated, but still a good starting place. See also Stevenson's
The English Novel: A Panorama (1960), which includes brief
critical surveys of many minor novelists as well as the major
figures in a careful chronological scheme.

The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction, by John
Sutherland, 1989. Alphabetical entries on novelists, publishers,
editors, reviewers, etc., with brief synopses of some 500 novels.
Includes useful index of pseudonyms and of married women's
alternate names.

Daims, Diva, and Janet Grimes. Toward a Feminist Tradition: An
Annotated Bibliography of Novels in English By Women, 1891-1920.
New York: Garland, 1982. A list of some 3,000 novels by women,
with annotations done from contemporary reviews -- not from the
books themselves. Useful and browsable guide to locating books,
but evaluative comments not to be trusted.

Women Writers of the 1890s, compiled by G. Krishnamurti, edited
by Margaret Drabble. London: H. Sotheran, 1991. An exhibition
catalogue, this provides descriptive bibliographies of a number
of interesting books, with illustrations, but is nothing like an
exhaustive listing.

Wolff, Michael, John S. North and Dorothy Deering. The Waterloo
Directory of Victorian Periodicals, 1824-1900. Waterloo,
Ontario: The University of Waterloo, 1977.

Fulton, Richard D., and C.M. Colee, eds. Union List of Victorian
Serials. New York: Garland, 1985. Described as a union list of
selected nineteenth-century british serials available in United
States and Canadian libraries, the book has many gaps in
coverage. It is very useful, however, for discovering the correct
title and dates of a large number of periodicals and for sorting
out the problems caused by periodicals with similar names.

Union List of Serials in Libraries of the United States and
Canada (3rd ed, 5 vols., 1965). Outdated, but more complete than
Fulton; may help find nearby library that might have holdings of
a periodical you want to see.

Victorian Novels in Serial by J. Don Vann, 1985. Provides
serial divisions and date of publication for large number of
novels.

Hughes, Linda K., and Michael Lund. The Victorian Serial.
Charlotte: University of Virginia Press, 1991. Discusses effect
of serialization on poetry as well as fiction.

Griest, Guinevere. Mudie's Circulating Library and the Victorian
Novel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970. Standard
source of information on influence of libraries, holdings of
various novelists. Also on influence of Geraldine Jewsbury as
publishers' reader.

Altick, Richard D. The English Common Reader: A Social History
of the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900, 1957. Essential
information on circulation of books and magazines, literacy,
modes of publication, etc.

White, Cynthia. Women's Magazines, 1693-1968. 1970.

Beetham, Margaret. A Magazine of Her Own?: Domesticity and
Desire in the Woman's Magazine, 1800-1914. Routledge, 1996.
First theoretically-informed discussion of women's magazines
(earlier works, of which White's is the best, are all descriptive
and/or historical), but limited to in-depth discussion of a small
number of magazines taken as case studies.

Dictionary of National Biography, Ed. Leslie Stephen, etc.
London: Oxford University Press, 1908- . Use the Concise
volumes to discover quickly if someone is listed; use also the
cumulative index in the supplementary volumes for people who have
died since 1901. The DNB does not list living persons; thus,
for example, Thomas Hardy is not found in the main volumes but in
the 4th supplement (for 1922-1930), since he died in 1928. DNB
is not good on women, but the most recent supplemental volume,
"Missing Persons," has added many who were not in the original
series. A completely revised version is now in progress with
publication expected sometime after 2000.

The Feminist Companion to Literature in English, ed. Virginia
Blain, Isobel Grundy, Patricia Clements. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1990. The best (i.e., most consistently
feminist) of the recent bio-critical guides to women writers.

Banks, Olive. The Biographical Dictionary of British Feminists,
Volume One: 1800-1930. New York: NYU Press, 1985. Brief DNB-
style entries on women and men active in various movements; not
nearly as accurate or inclusive as it could be, but it's a
starting place for some women who don't get into biographical
dictionaries of great men.

Boase, Modern English Biography. People who died 1851-1900;
shorter articles than DNB and much better on "lesser" figures,
especially those with radical connections.

British Biographical Index - a single cumulated list reproduced
from several hundred old biographical reference works. It's very
useful for finding information on people too minor to appear in
DNB or any standard literary reference work -- but it's also
often undependable (since many older biographical dictionaries
didn't check their facts). However, when looking for someone
who's "lost" it can sometimes provide a starting point. The index
is in volumes; the sources themselves on microfiche.

Obituaries can often be discovered in Palmer's Index to the
Times Newspaper. It's in annual volumes with quarterly
cumulations; the obituaries for each quarter are listed under
"deaths." Paley has the complete run of the London Times on
microfilm from 1790 to the present.

Kanner, Barbara. Women in Context. G.K. Hall, 1997. Critical,
biographical, and bibliographical guide to over 1,000 published
autobiographies by women born in the British Isles or in the
Empire from the 18th through the early 20th century, with
annotations and extremely useful indexes (so one can find, for
example, autobiographies of single women, or Unitarians, or
medical women, etc.)

Utter, Robert Palfrey, and Gwendolyn Bridges Needham. Pamela's
Daughters. New York: Macmillan, 1936. A study (mostly
condescending) on "fashions in heroines," the book is
nevertheless useful because it discusses a large number of
popular writers and suggests titles that may be worth
investigating for particular topics. Chapter on "New Girls for
Old."

Alston, R.C. A Checklist of Women Writers, 1801-1900. London:
British Library, 1990. Essentially a computer dump of women's
names from the British Library catalogue, the book is a useful
fast (but not terribly dependable) guide to drama, fiction, and
poetry by women writers. Lists nothing published after 1900;
you'll need to go to the BL catalogue itself for the later books
by authors who remained active into the twentieth century.

Hale, Sarah Josepha. Woman's Record: Sketches of All
Distinguished Women From the Creation to A.D. 1854. New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1855. Reprint. New York: Source Book Press,
1970. Use carefully, since there are several alphabets. The
supplements, which list living writers, are useful for
contemporary information, though not particularly dependable.

Robinson, Doris. Women Novelists, 1891-1920: An Index to
Biographical and Autobiographical Sources. New York: Garland,
1984. A finding list, done largely from secondary sources, that
indicates location of obituaries and entries in collective
biographies as well as biographical studies.

Schleuter, Paul, and June Schleuter, ed. An Encyclopedia of
British Women Writers. New York: Garland, 1988. Bibliographies
fuller in this book than in most of the other recent collective
biographies of women writers.

Literary History, Criticism, Theory

Ardis, Ann. New Women, New Novels: Feminism and Early
Modernism. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990.
Excellent bibliography, as well as discussion of 1890s novels.

Auerbach, Nina. Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian
Myth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982.

Bodenheimer, Rosemarie. The Politics of Story in Victorian
Social Fiction. Cornell University Press 1988. How social-
problem novels written by both "major" and "minor" authors
between 1837 and 1867 represented and reshaped issues such as
poverty, industrialism, and the position of women.

Calder, Jenni. Women and Marriage in Victorian Fiction. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1976. Some social backgrounds and
information on the marriage market, plus discussion of Dickens,
Eliot, Gaskell, Gissing, Meredith, Thackeray

Colby, Robert A. Fiction With a Purpose: Major and Minor
Nineteenth-Century Novels. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1967. Discussion of major novels in the context of large
numbers of less- well-known fictions with similar topic;
especially useful for locating titles and brief information about
some unfamiliar novelists. Core novels include Villette (and the
governess novel), The Mill on the Floss, Middlemarch (and the
emancipated woman)

Fernando, Lloyd. "New Women" in the Late Victorian Novel.
College Park: Penn State University Press, 1977. Primarily a
study of Meredith, Moore, Gissing, and Hardy

Flint, Kate. The Woman Reader, 1837-1914. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993. A study of reader response, reader
practices, and Victorian opinions about women and their reading
-- exceptionally wide ranging, with extensive bibliography
including very useful list of advice manuals. Separate chapters
on sensation fiction and new woman novels.

Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic:
The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary
Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Especially
on Charlotte Bronte (all novels), George Eliot

Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar. No Man's Land: The Place of
the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century, Vol. II: Sexchanges.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. Discussion of Grand's The
Heavenly Twins

Hughes, Winifred. The Maniac in the Cellar: Sensation Novels of
the 1860s. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. First
extensive contemporary discussion of sensation novel. Chapters on
Reade, Braddon, Wood, Collins.

Keating, Peter. The Haunted Study: A Social History of the
English Novel, 1875-1914. 1989. Only male authors are discussed
in any detail, and the criticism is fairly bland, but there is a
fair amount of social and historical background for a period not
often covered in depth as a single unit.

Kestner, Joseph. Protest and Reform: The British Social
Narrative By Women, 1827-1867. Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1985. Proposes that women writers invented the form of
realistic problem fiction as mode of seeking social reform;
traces many early women writers and titles.

Kranidis, Rita S. Subversive Discourse: The Cultural Production
of Late Victorian Feminist Novels. New York: St. Martin's, 1995.
Includes Mona Caird and Sarah Grand

Lansbury, Coral. The Old Brown Dog: Women, Workers, and
Vivisection in Edwardian England. Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 1985. Despite the word "Edwardian" in the title,
the book has a great deal of information about Victorian
sexuality, cruelty, pornography -- from a feminist standpoint.

Manos, Nikki, and Meri-Jane Rochelson, eds. Transforming Genres:
New Approaches to British Fiction of the 1890s. New York: St.
Martin's, 1994. Includes article on Sarah Grand

Marks, Patricia. Bicycles, Bangs, and Bloomers: The New Woman in
the Popular Press. University Press of Kentucky, 1990.

Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own: British Women
Novelists From Bronte to Lessing. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1977. The book which initially opened the canon
and proposed ways of tracing a women's tradition in prose
fiction.

Stokes, John. In the Nineties. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1989. New Journalism, degeneration, and other intellectual
and social preoccupations of the 1890s.

Thompson, Nicola Diane. Reviewing Sex: Gender and the Reception
of Victorian Novels. New York University Press, 1996. How gender
standards are constructed in and interact with reviews of novels
as seen in case studies of Reade's It's Never Too Late to Mend,
E. Bronte's Wuthering Heights, A. Trollope's Barchester
Towers, C. Yonge's The Heir of Redclyffe.

Tuchman, Gaye, and Nina Fortin. Edging Women Out: Victorian
Novelists, Publishers, and Social Change. London: Routledge,
1989. Although the thesis has been called into question, the book
is a very useful source of information. (The authors are
sociologists, not literary scholars or historians.)

Murray, Janet. Strong-Minded Women and Other Lost Voices From
Nineteenth- Century England. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982. An
anthology of very brief quotations from 19th century sources on
topics such as woman's mission, marriage, motherhood, single
life, education, work, poverty, and prostitution -- useful
primarily for suggesting sources.

Perkin, Joan. Victorian Women. London: John Murray, 1993. The
only recent comprehensive book on Victorian women; written for
general readers rather than scholars.

Rubinstein, David. Before the Suffragettes: Women's Emancipation
in the 1890s. Brighton: Harvester, 1986.

Internet Resources for Victorian Studies

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The Victoria Research Web has links
to other online resources, advice on research, bibliographies,
etc. It's at
http://VictorianResearch.org

Indiana University Library is building an online horde of works
by lesser-known women writers under the heading "Victorian Women
Writers Project." It's on the
web at:
http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/vwwp/

The British Library Catalogue of all pre-1976 imprints, plus the
Humanities and Sciences Catalogue from 1976-present, is now
available online if you have a graphic web browser The site is:
http://portico.bl.uk/nbs/opac97.html
It closes down from midnight to 4 a.m. London time, so you can't
do searches during much of the evening if you're in North America

The Library of Congress catalog is available with a graphics
browser at
http://www.loc.gov
or
http://lcweb.loc.gov/catalog/
(It is generally available during the following hours (US Eastern
Time): Mon-Fri 6:30 am - 9:30 pm; Sat 8-5; Sun 1-5. Searches do
not generally work at other hours or on Federal holidays)

By telnet (convenient if you do not have graphics capability at
home, and are using plain text), the Library of Congress is at:
telnet locis.loc.gov
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